The Astronaut's Wife
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Charlize Theron, Clea DuVall, Donna Murphy, Joe Morton, Johnny DeppBrand: NEW LINE HOME VIDEO
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-02-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Movie Reviews of The Astronaut's Wife
Movie Review: Mars ain't the kind of Place to raise a Kid...
Summary: 5 Stars
But it turns out it's just as cold and creepy on Earth, and cold is just how this chilly little Something-in-Outer-space-got-my-Astronaut-Husband flick serves it up. "The Astronaut's Wife" is a stylish, nastily clever, absolutely heartless, efficiently paced and admirably designed little gem of a horror movie, centering on the crux of everyone's worst fears: what if the love of my life is a ghoulish space alien who plans on destroying Earth?
When I was a little kid, I remember being scared silly by tales of outer space terror and body-snatching on those creepy "Outer Limits" and "The Twilight Zone" episodes. Everyone has seen at least one variation on the theme: the noble, heroic astronaut with the jutting jaw and confident swagger goes off on the Antares IV Expedition/Rocket Shoot to Planet X/Mission to the Moon, but when he comes back he's no longer himself. He's one of Them---a leering, skulking, alien horror, waiting to turn the tables on his unwitting friends, relatives, and fellow NASA employees.
That's what "The Astronaut's Wife" feels like to me: a really creepy "Outer Limits" episode with a decent budget, plus Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. Johnny Depp is perfect as the swaggering Commander Spencer Armacost, who goes up on a routine near-Earth orbit mission with his partner (played admirably by Nick Cassavetes---see, "Astronaut's Wife" is just one degree of separation from "Rosemary's Baby" after all!) one tragic day.
There is a mysterious and inexplicable electrical surge, the mission is aborted, and Armacost goes from doting husband to skulking, leering creep in one fell swoop.
He acquires some interesting new habits as well, like spending quality time with the family radio. He also gets a gig as a consultant for a secret weapons lab (run by the original serial killing 'Tooth Fairy' from "Manhunter", the creepy Tom Noonan).
Charlize Theron turns in a sympathetic performance as a wife who---well, dang it, she likes the high society and the big bucks just fine, but she wishes Johnny Depp would spend less time with the radio and a little more time with her.
Her suspicions mount when a former NASA employee (the great Joe Morton doing his nervous-tic-eye-twitching paranoid thang here)tries frantically to meet with her and communicate his worst fears (that possibly her husband's quality time with the radio has something to do with the fact that he may, in fact, be a Space Alien)and the movie spends most of the rest of its time with Theron in a cat and mouse game with Depp, who, when he's not cozying up to the radio, is skulking around the house switching off lights and doing horrible things to Theron's sister (played by the always resourcefully creepy Clea Duvall). Director Rand Ravitch employs a steady hand and brings things to a boil---all cold, sleek, and subtle.
If you got creeped out by the old "Outer Limits" shows, you'll love it.
JSG
Summary of The Astronaut's Wife
A woman becomes embroiled in a mystery after her astronaut husband suffers an accident and retires as a hero from the space program. When he begins acting strangely, she must decide whether his odd behavior is all in her mind, or if he is no longer the man she once knew.An intriguingly creepy premise but failed execution marks this stylish and ultimately bland thriller about a pretty, young woman whose pretty, young astronaut husband comes back from his most recent space mission a little... odd. Before that fated space trip, Spencer (Johnny Depp) and Jillian (Charlize Theron) were a sunny, happy couple with matching blonde hairdos and a predilection for romping in the sack from extremely clever camera angles. However, after a communications blackout brings Spencer and his partner back down to earth prematurely, things are a little... peculiar. Spencer's partner goes bonkers and has a heart attack; on top of that, the partner's wife takes a fatal shower with a plugged-in radio. Getting out of the space biz, Spencer accepts a job as a corporate exec in New York, and as a welcome to the Big Apple for his comely wife, he molests her at the company cocktail party. Soon enough, Jillian is pregnant, but as you might expect, this pregnancy (twins, don't you know) is a little... unusual. Writer-director Rand Ravich takes his sweet time getting from extremely obvious plot point A to even more obvious plot point B, stretching out the development particulars in mind-numbing, suspense-killing fashion. Even Joe Morton, as a sinisterly psychotic NASA official, can't liven things up--you know you're in bad thriller territory when the biggest scare comes from a light suddenly being switched off. Theron, sporting a Mia Farrow-Rosemary's Baby haircut, sleepwalks beautifully through the movie, but she did this role much, much better in The Devil's Advocate. Depp, with a cornpone Southern accent, is about as realistic as his peroxided hair. Ravich does the viewer no favors with a hackneyed ending straight out of a B-grade paperback horror novel in which the most shocking moment is Theron's sudden emergence as a brunette. With Blair Brown as a jaded socialite who offers to help out Theron by providing do-it-yourself abortion pills, and a lovely Donna Murphy as the suicidal wife who figures it all out before everyone else. --Mark Englehart
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